Fourth Age: Video Maker Required

[Dol Guldur]

We are looking for someone who has the skills or is willing to learn the skills to become our Fourth Age outsource video maker. Videos have always been seen as a bit of a luxury and we have no one on the team with the time to attend to this.

It is not critical to the mod of course, but it would be nice to be able to have some footage to aid in our storyline and to promote the mod and its music. We've recently had a new musician allow us use of his music and still have our signature piece unused and awaiting a video.

If interested then please reply to this thread.

Only reply if you are committed.

Here are the relevant links for learning about the process, though we prefer someone who already has some experience -

Movie Cam Instructions
http://www.freewebtown.com/creepfilms/RTM_Doc06.html

Fraps, Windows Movie Maker, Animation Shop...process of making movies
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showp...5&postcount=34

We would like to see samples before taking it any further.

Thank you.

[Gandalf the White]

I am the person for the job! I use windows movie maker and have loads of experience and can use movie cam.

[Dol Guldur]

Thank you for your response.

WMM, in my experience (which is not great btw), puts out bad quality video. However, perhaps there are settings and other things to get around that - could you provide a sample?

[Gandalf the White]

yes I am working on 3 samples at the moment based around Arthurian Total War, Lord of the Rings and Rome Total War links will be posted soon.
Yes I have found the correct settings for video as I agree quality isn't great at normal.

[Dol Guldur]

Great - look forward to it!

Here's an old lotr:tw one (the fourth age does not have any on youtube for quick veiwing). This portrays the detail/skill we need though - lotr:tw videos use the movie soundtrack as overlay. In our case we would wish to preserve the sounds of the battle, hooves etc and blend our music in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5SX7PQg11g

[Gandalf the White]

I do not currently have any rendered in-game footage sorry :(
I have produced 3 videos using different themes. One is Rome: Total War based, one Arthurian Total War and Flight Simulator X and the other is a Lord of the Rings based idea. It took me about 2 hours to make all three (including tea).
http://hosted.filefront.com/drwho200/
Please go to Work for Fourth Age and look at the videos.

[Dol Guldur]

Thanks Gandalf

As far as I can see these are all created from video that already existed and have been clipped or relayered with sound.

Do you have any footage of RTW battlemap that you shot and then turned into a video?

I'd be interested in seeing something once you have it, or if you could point me to anything I may have missed. Thx

[Gandalf the White]

I am very busy but in about a week I will have loads of videos compiled. They will be from LORTW mainly as I like the mod. I hope you like it.

[Dol Guldur]

LOTR:TW is a great mod. Wles has done a great job. His video creator - Echolyn (formerly Spongebob) - made some great videos too. But he disappeared some time ago now.

I look forward to seeing some samples. Just post here when you're done, or PM me.

[wlesmana]

Echolyn ran off to Disneyland.







I'm not kidding.

[Gandalf the White]

The Video quality isnt great :( because the good output would be 60mb which is a little too much for me as my limit is low on broadband. I think it is the same setting used for LOTRTW trailer so its best at small screen. I used the sounds from LOTRTW and the soundtrack; I couldnt record the sound as I didnt have time but I can do it for next time. Dont be alarmed by the two shots at the end they are meant to be still. I have pm'ed' you the file link, everyone else it is available from http://hosted.filefront.com/drwho200/

[Crian]

I'd love to give this a shot as I have a lot of experience with video editing but little with the RTW movie cam, hopefully I could assemble something in a couple of weeks after extensively studying the movie cam.

This "signature piece" you mentioned, it means music right? Sort of like a "main theme" of FATW? Plus is the new music you mentioned in your post in the mod already? To get access to it, just download the mod right?

[Dol Guldur]

Crian,

Thank you for your interest.

We would indeed welcome your samples for review.

We have been blessed with some fine music by some very generous musicians (and recently have acquired permission to use the album of another which will be featured on 2.0).

The signature piece itself is not in the mod as that particular piece we have only secured the rights to distribute it in non mp3 format. As music files cannot be packed in a BI mod we can only use this piece in video.

If you wish to access some of our current music you must indeed download the mod - or more specifically the music pack. But, of course, it will be hard to take shots of the game without installing that too ;)

The latest build and current (critical) patch, as well as the music pack, can be found by following the link in my sig (go to the forums).

Thx again for your interest and we look forward to seeing your work.

D.G.

[Crian]

Aaah I see, so you'll only release the "signature piece" to the movie maker who receives your stamp of approval.

Alright I see, off to work for me then.

[Arakorn-eir]

Or then I will edit it in after you've assembled the footage (amongst other tracks too), if you wish so.

[Crian]

I'm roaring to go but I'm currently on vacation at my family's hometown, and I unfortunately didn't bring my RTW and BI installers with me .

Darn, I won't be getting back until next week so it'll take a while. By the way I'm planning on using Adobe Premiere because I've had extensive experience with it then compress the output using Media Encoder. I'll record a bunch of battles and get as many shots as I can, taking into account the cinematic style used in movies and the Total War videos themselves .

Can't wait to get my hands working on this... if I only knew M2TW would be so boooring.

[Crian]

Alright... I finally got my hands on RTW:BI again and I got the mod up and running. I spent a few hours last night messing around with the movie cam. I played a battle, saved the replay, then followed the movie cam instructions to the letter.

I thought I'd render some shots first so I could check if there would be compatibility problems with Premiere... but unfortunately the command line "-movie_cam:capture_video" doesn't seem to work for me.

Everything was set... the replay was good, the camera path was set.... I did it several times but the game just won't render!! I even tried it in Vanilla RTW and I get the exact same result (or lack thereof)

Here are the exact words in the target line of the shrotcut I made =("C:\Program Files\Activision\Rome - Total War\RomeTW-BI.exe" -show_err -nm -mod:bi\ci -movie_cam:capture_video) minus the parentheses. I followed the instructions to the letter but it won't render! I load my replay with this shortcut, press L to load my camera path, then R to render as it said in the instructions. The battle reloads, but no rendering happens! No error, no crash to desktop, no alerts, nothing... it just reloads like normal as if the "capture_video" in the command line isn't there. No capture_tga folder.... nothing. I actually wished I've gotten an error or CTD instead of something like this where I'm completely clueless as to where the problen is.

I really, really want to do this and with time I'm sure I can. This problem is really frustrating, can you help? I made the battle with FE 1.9, I uploaded the camera path and the battle replay for it at http://hosted.filefront.com/crian/. Could someone try to render it? There's another video there but it's not related so just ignore it. Please help I really want to do this...

[Crian]

I've been browsing at TWCenter about the problem and apprently there are also other people who seem to have the exact same problem I have with the RTW movie cam. I have 1.5 RTW and BI 1.6 of course (otherwise FE won't work) and there are people over there are saying that they can't render if the game is patched.

They were saying something about preferences.txt? Maybe it doesn't work with my settings (1024, 1.33, 1)? Anyone here who can render successfully? What TGA settings in preferences.txt should I put in order for it to work?

[Dol Guldur]

OK, coming to the end of the first phase of the build for FATW 2.0. Has any progress been made by those applying here? One has PM'd me and dropped out.

I have received no samples as of yet from the 2 remaining applicants.

[Gandalf the White]

Ok new attempt not very edited just to show how the music can link it is a battle of the mountain path; not in a mountain path yet! Gondor vs. Mordor from LOTRTW using there music from the films. http://hosted.filefront.com/drwho200/
I cannot install FATW at the moment but will be fixed soon.

[Arakorn-eir]

Crian: Beyond patch 1.2 it is no longer possible to render the "video" (just a bunch of images really), you'll have to do it with Fraps for example.

[Crian]

Crian: Beyond patch 1.2 it is no longer possible to render the "video" (just a bunch of images really), you'll have to do it with Fraps for example.

Thanks I found out the hard way. Fraps is choppy for me while game cam needs you to be online while you install it. (Sigh) Why oh why did they take it out in 1.5?!

Everything would've been so much simpler the game cam is a joy to use.